Michelle Luongo was walking with her boyfriend along the Sea Bright beach last summer when she saw that some of the benches on the cement promenade were inscribed with messages and memorials to people who had passed away.
She instantly thought of her grandmother, Paula Luongo, who died earlier in the year of the coronavirus. Paula loved the Shore and led the East Hanover family’s vacations for decades at the Sea Bright summer home she and her late husband bought in 1978.
“I wonder how you get that?” she asked her boyfriend, pointing to a bench. “I am going to figure this out.”
Luongo went to the Sea Bright website and after some clicking around, she was emailing Patricia Spahr, a 34-year town employee who’s been handling the bench program for years, since the Monmouth County borough rebuilt its oceanfront after Superstorm Sandy.
Later in 2020, the Luongo family held a small ceremony to unveil the bench that Michelle had spearheaded. It reads, simply, “In Loving Memory Of Paula & Robert Luongo, Forever in Our Hearts.”
The Luongo bench cost the family $850 and was one of the last backless benches on the Sea Bright oceanfront. Michelle said the process was easy and memorable.
“Totally worth it,” she said. “This has been really meaningful for my family.”
One of the memorial benches in Sea Bright, New Jersey, in June 2021. This one says, "Take to the Sea! The Sanders Family 2019."(Kevin Shea | NJ Advance Media)
In Loving Memory James Schwartz, Enjoy the Beach, Ocean and Sun! May the Schwartz Be With You - on a bench in Sea Bright
Up and down the Jersey Shore, many benches along boardwalks are inscribed with a variety of messages, sayings and tributes, often to people no longer with us.
The price and process vary town by town, just like the messages that adorn them – if they are available at all. Some towns have waiting lists, and tourist mecca Point Pleasant Beach has discontinued them.
In Sea Bright, the messages are carved into the bench itself by an outside vendor, Spahr explained. Benches with a back, which are sold out, were $1,400.
In Sea Bright, like other towns, it’s not a moneymaker, and the ‘buyer’ is effectively getting the bench for life. The form to get one, though, is clear that if the beach or bench is destroyed, like in a storm, it will not be replaced.
Spahr said the cost covers the bench, shipping, lettering and installation. Costs can go higher for extra lettering, but the buyer pays for it. “We really try to work with everyone and give them an idea of how it will look,” Spahr said.
Rarely, when money is left over, the borough tosses it into the beautification fund.
Spahr handles the benches as one of many duties. She is also the tax collector, sewer utility collector and secretary of the health commission board. She suspects there is an employee like her in any town with such a program.
The Brugger Family Invite You to Have a “Sit” And Enjoy the Jersey Shore - on a bench in Avon
In Avon, it’s Barbara Suchecki, the town’s grants coordinator, and she’s heard it all dealing with people wanting a bench in the square-mile town further south in Monmouth County.
“People take them very seriously. I’ve heard like, ‘I met my future wife on that bench’ and similar stories,” she said. “There’s a big attachment to the benches.”
For a small town, Avon’s draw is partly due to the cost - $250, for a plaque on the distinct, green-slatted benches.
“It’s a bargain,” she said. The town currently has about 110 memorial benches and a waiting list of about 70, Suchecki said. “We maintain the plaque until the next superstorm.”
A man rests on a bench in Avon in this June 2021 photo.(Kevin Shea | NJ Advance Media)
After Sandy, when benches were washed away all over town, officials re-installed as many as they could, and reached out to owners to see if they wanted to replace the plaque, but the records were not the most accurate. “Some of those benches go way back,” Suchecki said.
Anyone who had a bench, and the borough had a record, got “first dibs,” she said. The town had about 150 with plaques before Sandy and have reduced them a bit down to 110.
With a fresh approach, Suchecki said the idea was to space them evenly.
Still, people call often to get around the waiting list, or complain about their placement, Suchecki said. “You can’t imagine the phone calls that I get,” she said with a laugh.
She has heard many sentimental stories too, like people who take family pictures annually on their bench, or the guy who visits on the same day monthly to spend time with a loved one now gone.
“It’s heartwarming, she said.
In the end, she said, the benches are for sitting. “I wish we could give one to everybody, but you wouldn’t be able to walk on the boardwalk.”
In Loving Memory of Larry Smith, 1947-2014, While Sitting Here, Remember Me, And Watch for Flying Pigs Over the Sea. With Love, Your Family - on a bench in Ocean City
In Ocean City, the memorial benches program has been paused since 2015. It had an astounding 850-person waiting list at the beginning of the summer, city spokesman Doug Bergen said.
Homes, vacations and memories are handed down generationally in the Cape May County city that boasts a legendary, 2.5-mile boardwalk on its oceanfront.
“People love Ocean City,” Bergen said.
When it was last open, an Ocean City bench memorial cost $650 for a thick metal plaque bolted to the top rung, and they are also a lifetime purchase.
Seeing the popularity, Ocean City offered memorial brick pavers at a city park and other similar programs. “That sold out too,” Bergen said.
Bergen said he does not see more benches getting plaques “anytime soon.”
A row of boardwalk benches in Ocean City, many of them with memorial plaques, in this June 2021 photo.(Kevin Shea | NJ Advance Media)
In Point Pleasant Beach, which boasts well over 150 benches, the town no longer offers them, and there is no waiting list.
“The bench program was very successful, maybe even too successful here in Point Pleasant Beach,” Mayor Paul Kanitra said.
Before the pandemic, residents complained there were too many benches. “Then when the pandemic hit we spread them out even more to create the necessary distancing,” he said.
“At this point we have very few locations in town where new benches would be needed and as such we have discontinued the program,” he said.
In Loving Memory, Nick “Papou” Fillou, In Our Hearts Forever, With Love Always, Family and Friends 2007 - on a bench in Bradley Beach
Maggie Hart-Zuhowski’s extended family got a few before the town shut it down, and they love them dearly, especially Maggie.
She grew up on Forman Avenue, a street which dead-ends at the ocean, and all her childhood memories were on the street — home, school, church and the beach. Now, she often visits a bench on the boardwalk at Forman that simply says, “Hart Family” with a red heart.
“This is my happy place,” she said. The bench is a memorial to her parents, Michael and Cecilia, who died younger than most.
In Point Pleasant, memorial messages are carved into the heavy, stone bases of the benches, and are usually shorter. On the left, they usually have a name, and on the right side, a saying. They were $400 to $500 when last available.
On the Hart bench, the right side says, “Together Forever.” The family was also able to buy two white rocking chairs, for other passed-on relatives, which sit next to the bench and which a few other people bought before the program was shut down.
Nearby are benches for related families, the Sharkeys (her mother’s family) with a green shamrock, and her cousins, the Gunsiorowskis.
The Gunsiorowski bench says “Happy Birthday” on the right side — a saying their father, Walter Gunsiorowski, who Hart-Zuhowski knew as Uncle Wally — proclaimed often, no matter the occasion.
She knows the stories of other benches too, rattling off the names. She still lives in town and is on the boardwalk often.
Once, Hart-Zuhowski said laughing, she walked onto the boardwalk for the weekly fireworks and saw a couple — she suspects they were not locals — who asked a group of people to vacate “their bench.”
She watched in amusement when the couple tried to explain that they “bought a bench” and thought they had the right to sit on it whenever they wanted. “I was hysterical, I mean, we know this is not our bench, it just memorializes them,” she said of her family’s bench.
“It’s just really nice to have a place to gather place to reflect,” Hart-Zuhowski said.
“I go here often and sit and pray.”
The right side of a bench in Point Pleasant Beach memorializes the Gunsiorowski family. This side, 'Happy Birthday,' was Walter Gunsiorowski's favorite phrase.(Kevin Shea | NJ Advance Media)
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Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com.
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